Philips DVP 642 and AVI

[mawcobra]

Ive searched the forums and cant seem to find the answer Im looking for so i pose this problem to you all:

When buring AVIs to DVD using Nero, sometimes my 642 wont read all the files. Like today I burned 4 movies on an DVD (no recoding or anything done) and only 2 show up on the player. the other 2 dont even appear on the menu. They are all there on the PC. I installed MPEG4Modifier to see if the 2 that dont play fall in the Qpel or GMC problem area, but they dont. One the ones that failed they are XVID Mpeg-4 video codec and AC3 DVM audio. One of the ones that play are XVID Mpeg-4 codec as well BUT the audio is MPEG Layer-3. Is the audio the issue and would it prevent from even showing up? I bought this player so i didnt have to recode BUT if I must, please suggest the best program to use to fix this issue. Best = FASTEST without losing too much quality :P

Thanks!

[lordyu]

What's the resulution of the movies? It may not play if it's too high. I believe it's 720xNNN max but some say 800xNNN.

If it's smaller than 720xNNN, I would try copying a small part from the middle of the file and test that on the player.

[oldfart13]

Xvid codec may need an upgrade for the firmware from the Philips website. There seem to be a lot of people using that codec these days but they are playing their vids on their comps and not on DVD players...

[mawcobra]

672*288 is the res, so thats not the prob and I do not want to watch on the computer

i think it has something to do with the audio for some reason.............the search continues

[junkmalle]

I know the Philips can play XVID as long as there's no QPEL. I'm pretty sure it can handle GMC and AC3 audio. Upgrade the firmware if you haven't already.

One fast way to recode would be to use VirtualDub. Use Direct Stream Copy for the video (assuming the video is OK), Full Processing for the audio, convert to MPEG audio. I don't think you'll need to do this though.

[mawcobra]

well.............i have the latest firmware up to the newest one. i have hesitated to upgrade to the latest one because most posts here say it doesnt really do anything but i just i can try that next before converting........

[canadateck]

I'm sure you did,But to make sure.Did you close the Disc?

[canadateck]

I asked because i can even see a .EXE file that i put on the same DVD with an Xvid.

[mawcobra]

i normally dont talk to little boys peeing on things BUT yes Finalize Disc was on, always is......thanks fer checking though

[canadateck]

i normally dont talk to little boys peeing on things BUT yes Finalize Disc was on, always is......thanks fer checking though

Great to hear.Also i had one other question,Did you burn it in a DVD burner? Or CD burner? I dont think there is a diff, but thought i would ask.... :P

[canadateck]

well.............i have the latest firmware up to the newest one. i have hesitated to upgrade to the latest one because most posts here say it doesnt really do anything but i just i can try that next before converting........

All the newest one does is add Macrovision.

[mawcobra]

so the newest one is useless in this case. and i burned it on an DVD burner........VCDs brrrrrrrr never ever again!

[canadateck]

I think there will always be problems with Players they never will play everything 100% of the time,But this player is great and 70$ at that...

[mawcobra]

true

[lordyu]

Try what junkmalle said using VirtualDub

1. chop off a few seconds of both video and audio using direct stream copy for both and try playing
2. do the same but disable audio

If you could post the resulting avi files then we can take a look.

[cabre]

Try dvd santa,or vso divx to dvd.both are very easy to use.

[mawcobra]

well i reburned the files, both bad and good, with Nerovision Express 3. Ive never really used it before, i usually just use Nero Burning Rom, so i have no idea what it does differently. i do know i cant fit as much on an DVD and it takes 3+ hrs to make (vs the 13 min Rom did) but the menu is nice and the files work just fine now........i guess i will set to burn and walk away!

[giannid]

I had a similar problem when I was trying to write subtitles into the .avi file - I think I used subtitle station subs and burned them into the .avi file. However they weren't really burnt-in, they would just load with the file. They didn't work with media player classic, but did work with powerDVD (2 computer software DVD media players). When I put the file onto a CD-R, the DVP642 would not read the file at all - it just skipped it as if it didn't exist.

Therefore it seems that the DVP will not read any complex .avi files, though I would like confirmation, and thus xvid files with attached subs, multiple audio, etc., might pose problems, and that is probably what caused the problems.

You can use the Nerovision3 to convert to SVCD or DVD and then use AutoGk to convert it back to an xvid file.

[lordyu]

@mawcobra:
You shouldn't have to spend hours to re-encode it from MPEG4 (DivX/XviD) to MPEG2 (DVD). It'll only eat up a lot more space with no quality gain. But if that's convenient for you and you don't wanna dig into the real cause of the problem then that's fine.

@giannid:
I'm not sure whether you're talking about permanent subtitles or separate subtitles. If it's permanent subs I can't see why it wouldn't play because of the subs. As for multiple audio tracks, I've done 2 AC3 tracks in one AVI and both play fine. But there is a problem with one AC3 and one MP3 I will only hear silence when switch back from the 2nd track. And you can just load an avi with a problem in VirtualDub to re-encode (either video or audio, or both) without having to spend hours convert to DVD first.

[catdaddio6]

i had this happen,,make sure after the file is in nero,,it says .avi after the filename,,,i also changed an mp2 file name in nero to .mpg and it read it fine in 642,,but i dont know if that mattered,because it may read it as .mp2 and play it,,i just wanted to make sure

[Xanthro]

So, what was the solution for this problem? I've run across it as well and I can't figure out how to fix it.

I have 11 AVIs burnt to a single DVD (~3.5GB). As far as I can tell all 11 files are encoded the same (with slight variations in resolution that I'll get into in a sec), yet for some reason only 10 of the 11 files is displayed in the menu and playable in the philips... while all are playable on my computer.

Here's what quicktime tells me the files are formatted as. 3ivx D4.0.4, MP3 Audio, Sterio, 48 or 44.1kHz, 16 bits (variable bitrate), FPS ~25, and the following resolutions: 512x352, 480x360, 512x384.

The file that is not being recognized has 44.1kHz with 512x384 (but so does the file dirrectly in front of it)

I have noticed this same thing on other discs I have as well, however I've only sat down and figured out all theformatting for the one disc.

Also, I was under the impression that philips didn't support 3ivx... so I'm not sure if I should believe what quicktime's telling me or not.

So any help would be great
Thanks

[canadateck]

Open them with Gspot.

[Xanthro]

Ok, here's an update.

Turns out my problem had nothing to do with encoding.

http://forums.divx.com/eve/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=782106&f=531101651&m=638105332&r=852100432#852100432

Basically, the name of the file that wasn't playing was too long. The player simply would not read it. I shaved it down and 'voila', it works great.

[junkmalle]

I think I've also seen a related problem where several files had similar long names so some of them didn't show up.

MyFavoritesShowEpisode01.avi
MyFavoritesShowEpisode02.avi
MyFavoritesShowEpisode03.avi
MyFavoritesShowEpisode04.avi
MyFavoritesShowEpisode05.avi

The player shows the munged munged names but would leave some out:

MYFAVO~1.AVI
MYFAVO~2.AVI
MYFAVO~3.AVI

Note that the munged file numbers didn't necessarily correspond to the episode numbers.